Thirty free confidentiality agreement templates in Microsoft Word, covering mutual and one-way arrangements for employees, contractors, suppliers and business discussions. Editable, and free to download without signing up.
General information, not legal advice. These are generic document layouts. Contract law differs by country and by state, and a confidentiality agreement that is enforceable in one place may not be in another. Have a qualified lawyer review any agreement before you ask someone to sign it, particularly where the information being protected has real commercial value.
Templates30 versions
FormatMicrosoft Word (.docx)
Opens inWord, Google Docs, LibreOffice
CostFree, no signup
Confidentiality agreement or NDA?
They are the same thing. “Confidentiality agreement”, “non-disclosure agreement” and “NDA” are used interchangeably, and nothing turns on which name appears at the top of the page. What does matter is which direction the obligation runs.
Type
Use it when
One-way, or unilateral
Only one side is sharing anything. An employer giving a new starter access to customer data, or a company briefing a freelancer on an unreleased product.
Mutual, or bilateral
Both sides will reveal something. Two businesses exploring a partnership, a potential acquisition, or a joint tender. If you use a one-way agreement here, only one party is actually protected.
Check which kind you have downloaded before you send it out. A mutual agreement reads “each party” and “the receiving party” throughout; a one-way one names a Disclosing Party and a Receiving Party and keeps those roles fixed.
If you specifically want an agreement for taking on staff, our employee NDA templates are written for that relationship. The templates on this page are the broader set, covering contractors, suppliers and business-to-business discussions as well.
The templates
Thirty versions, differing in length and in how tightly they define the protected information. The shorter ones suit a quick conversation with a supplier; the longer ones are closer to what you would use for an employee or a long-running contract.
Nearly every version on this page is built from the same parts. Knowing what each is for makes it much easier to tell whether a template fits your situation.
The parties. Full legal names, not trading names. For a company, the registered entity and its number.
What counts as confidential. The most important clause in the document. Too narrow and the thing you cared about is not covered; too broad, like “all information of any kind”, and courts in some places will decline to enforce it at all.
What is excluded. Standard exclusions are information already public, information the recipient already lawfully held, information they develop independently, information a third party gives them legitimately, and disclosures a court compels.
The obligations. What the recipient must actually do: not disclose, not use it for anything else, keep it secure, limit who sees it internally.
How long it lasts. Decide this deliberately rather than accepting the template’s default. Indefinite obligations are common for genuine trade secrets but are treated with suspicion in some jurisdictions when applied to ordinary business information.
Return or destruction. What happens to documents and files when the relationship ends.
Governing law. Which country’s or state’s law applies, and where disputes are heard. Easy to leave blank and expensive to have left blank.
Signatures and dates. Signed by someone with authority to bind each party.
Two things your template probably does not include
Generic NDA templates circulating online, these included, tend to predate two developments in US law. Both are worth knowing about before you use one.
The whistleblower immunity notice
Under the Defend Trade Secrets Act of 2016, an employer must include a notice of whistleblower immunity in any agreement with an employee, contractor or consultant that governs the use of trade secrets or confidential information. The notice explains that a person cannot be held liable for disclosing a trade secret in confidence to a government official or an attorney solely to report or investigate a suspected violation of law.
Leaving it out does not void the agreement, but an employer who omitted it cannot recover exemplary damages or legal fees in a trade secret action against that individual. The requirement applies to agreements entered into from 11 May 2016 onward, and it can alternatively be satisfied by cross-referencing a written policy you have given the person (Katten, Jones Day).
Limits on what an NDA can cover
An NDA cannot be used to prevent someone reporting or discussing unlawful conduct. The Speak Out Act, in force since 7 December 2022, makes non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses unenforceable where they were agreed before a dispute arose and the dispute concerns sexual assault or sexual harassment. It does not affect settlement agreements reached after a dispute has already arisen (Sullivan & Cromwell).
A blanket confidentiality clause in an employment agreement therefore does not do what its wording appears to say in these situations, and drafting one on the assumption that it does is a mistake worth avoiding.
Both points above describe US federal law and are general information rather than advice. Other countries handle whistleblowing and confidentiality very differently, and individual states add their own requirements. If you are issuing agreements regularly, this is exactly the kind of thing worth thirty minutes of a lawyer’s time once, rather than discovering it later.
Filling one in
Pick one-way or mutual first
Everything else follows from this. Work out who is actually disclosing something before you start editing, because converting a one-way agreement into a mutual one properly means rewriting most of the clauses, not swapping a few names.
Define the information specifically
Replace vague placeholder wording with a real description: the customer database, the formulation, the financial model, the source code for a named product. Specific definitions survive challenge far better than catch-all ones.
Set the term and the governing law
Two fields that templates leave blank and users skip past. Decide how long the obligation runs, and name the jurisdiction whose law applies.
Have it reviewed, then sign on paper or properly electronically
Get a lawyer to read it once before it becomes your standard document. Then sign it with a real signature or a proper e-signature service. A typed name in a Word file is weak evidence that anyone agreed to anything.
Common questions
Is a free template good enough?
For a low-stakes conversation, often yes. For anything where the information has real commercial value, treat the template as a starting draft and have a lawyer review it. The cost of a bad NDA only shows up when you need to rely on it.
Do I need Microsoft Word?
No. Upload the .docx to Google Docs or open it in LibreOffice. Both handle plain contract documents without trouble.
How long should an NDA last?
There is no single right answer. Fixed terms of a few years are common for ordinary business information, and indefinite terms are used for genuine trade secrets, but what is enforceable varies by jurisdiction. Decide deliberately and take advice if it matters.
Can I use one agreement for several people?
Each person signs their own copy. Use the same template, but a separate signed document per individual, each dated.
Does an NDA stop someone working for a competitor?
No. That is a non-compete, a different document with different rules, and one that is heavily restricted or unenforceable in many places. An NDA governs information, not employment.
Can I use these commercially?
Yes, for agreements your own business issues. You may not resell or redistribute the template files. See our Terms of Use.
Pingback: 20 Free Office Sublease Agreement Templates for Word
Pingback: 20 Free Investment Proposal Templates for Word